This is something we hope to change with the first Knight Mozilla news innovation challenge topic. We’re inviting hacks and hackers from around the world to answer the question: how can new web video tools transform news storytelling? People with the best ideas will get to bring them to life with a full year paid fellowship in a world leading newsroom.

The next ‘montage moment’

What do I mean by transform storytelling? Just that: taking today’s online video tools beyond the mechanical and obvious, bringing people, ideas and events to life in ways we haven’t seen before. To get your imagination going, think back to how visual storytelling emerged in the world of cinema.

It took 25 years for Eisenstein to grab hold of this technical wonder and then say: wow, I bet you we could tell a more powerful story if we varied the shots a bit and then edited them together. With Potemkin, he invented the visual language we still use to tell stories today: montage.

The fundamental technology didn’t change in those 25 years. The Lumiere’s knew how to splice film and move the camera around. Eisenstein’s breakthrough was to use basic film technology to tell a story in a new and creative way. Which is very much like where we are at with web native video today: huge technological potential just waiting to be seized for creative storytelling. What we need now is a ‘montage moment’ for the web era.

Open video: a huge palette of awesomeness

The potential of web native <video> truly is awesome: we can now link any frame within any video to any other part of the web. This was hard to do in the world of Flash video. The introduction of the HTML5 <video> tag over the last two years has made it easy.

The same tools have been used to show how transcripts can be used to search and then navigate immediately to anywhere within a long clip. This demo from Danish public radio shows how this can work with web native <audio>. The same thing could easily be done with video.

Of course, the big potential is in connecting video to the massive amount media and data that already exists all across the web. Imagine if you could weave the sum of all human knowledge seamlessly into your news story or documentary. That’s now possible. This book report demo shows the basics concept, with a student connecting her narration to wikipedia articles and news reports.

We’re hoping that you — or someone you know — is up to this challenge. If you think you are, you should enter the MoJo innovation challenge. All you need to do is: draw up a napkin sketch showing how you might tell a story in a new way with open video, write a brief paragraph about it and then submit it online. If your idea is solid, you’ve got a good chance at a fellowship where you could actually bring it to life at the Al Jazeera, BBC, the Guardian, Die Zeit or the Boston Globe. Who knows, maybe you could be the Eisenstein of open video?

Why now? Yes, partly because it’s Marshall’s birthday. But more importantly, we’re at a key juncture: traditional media are increasingly reinventing themselves by tapping into the essence of the web; at the same time monopolies in spaces like social networking and mobile apps are calling the freedom of the web into question. Things could go either way: open or closed.

Back in February, I explored this theme in the annual Marshall McLuhan Lecture at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin. I’ve re-recorded the talk and posted it here:

At a high level, I believe we have to make a number of critical choices in coming years that will impact media and society for decades to come. My three top level points are:

We rarely call it out, but the same basic principles that make free software and open source greatare also baked into the very fabric of the web itself. The web gives us the freedom to use, study, remix and share — that’s what we are all doing at a massive scale. We do these things because they are baked into both the technical building blocks and the culture of the web. When we think about the web as the medium that is shaping our times, it’s important to remember that this kind of freedom that is central to what’s going on.

McLuhan said: “The next medium, whatever it is – it may be the extension of consciousness – will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form.”

This has happened. And it hasn’t just happened to television. All media have become the content of the web. As a result, all media are wrapped in this context of freedom: in a world that lets you bend and share without asking permission. The initial reaction from old media was push back. But times are changing. We’re very clearly entering a phase where smart media players are using the essence of the web to reinvent themselves. Eg. witness the Guardian and Wikileaks or Al Jazeera in Egypt.

The context is a web built on freedom. The opportunity is that all media are reinventing themselves in this context. If we seize this opportunity, we can bake things like transparency, remix and sharing into the media culture and practice for the next 100 years. That’s what we’re trying to do with Mozilla Drumbeat projects like popcorn.js: build tools that give filmmakers and journalists access to the essence of the web. If we succeed, we also bake the web into how whole industries work and think.

Of course, there is another direction we can choose: we could close down the web. Tim Wu talks eloquently about this in his book the Master Switch. Talking about media empires in the last 100 years, he says: “Open eras tend to last for about 15 – 20 years. And then they flip into being more closed. We may be at the beginning of the closing with the internet.”

It’s this point about choice that makes media such an important theme for Mozilla and Drumbeat in 2011: now is the time to aggressively, creatively and playfully promote web technology and web thinking in the broader world of media. What we do now will shape media — and society — for a long time to come.

I’d love to get people’s feedback on the ideas in this talk. And, even more, I’d love to see people building things and playing with the theme of media, freedom and the web as part of Mozilla Drumbeat in 2011.

This is the third in a series of posts about media, freedom and the web. I’m hoping to do more, including a few posts on the future of cinema.

My mind is regularly blown by the way web video is changing how we learn, and increasingly how we teach. It’s something that raises wonderful questions about the future of education.

I think about this a ton as I watch my 11 year old become a bit of a geek. He doesn’t use help files or FAQs to learn new software. He watches YouTube tutorials. And, as his skills grow, he shows off and shares by making his own:

Chris points out that we live in a world of online video fueled by a desire to dance, sing, perform, play and think. Most people who post videos online are not driven by the desire to teach — they just want to show off or have fun. Yet, as we watch them, we learn.

There is, however, a huge online phenomena very much about the desire to teach: web video tutorials. A great example is the Khan Academy:

Driven by a. frustration with how schools teach math and science and b. easy access of YouTube, Sal Khan has produced a massive, high quality collection of 1800+ web tutorials for self learners. The idea has landed him a $2 million Google 10^100 grant. It’s also attracted millions of viewers eager to learn.

Clearly, this is HUGE — and is truly giving us all more control over how we learn. The question is: what does this mean for the future of education? What does it mean for who we turn to when we want learn something? And how we all start to teach each other?

These are questions I want to sink my teeth into at Mozilla’s Learning, Freedom and the Web Festival in Barcelona. I’m not sure what this conversation looks like yet. If you’re making or thinking about video tutorials, I’d love your help figuring this out (and running sessions in Barcelona). Please get in touch.

I’ve been meaning to blog about Web Made Movies for a while now. It’s one of the early Drumbeat projects I’m most excited about. One reason is the pitch: “A documentary about the future of the web, told by the people of the web.” But I’m also excited by the proposed partnership between filmmakers (submitting footage and episodes) and hackers (creating innovative HTML5 video interfaces). The idea is not only to create an online documentary series, but also invent an open source approach to cinema.

Brett posted a teaser videoblog on Friday (above), prompting me to put fingers to keyboard. The teaser is mostly an invitation to participate by submitting story ideas. We’re looking for examples of new internet technology, applications or content that will shape the open web of the future. Brett (and probably Henrik) will be blogging on the story framework soon. But it would be great to get your suggestions now if ideas are already popping to mind.

The first big opportunities for participation will be the pilot episode and a ‘future of the video player’ design challenge.

Shooting has already begun on the pilot episode, including interviews with Local Motors, Iranian bloggers, Brasilian computer recyclers and (hopefully) Johnathan Zittrain. If you have stories or footage to contribute, we can roll them in.

The design challenge will start later in April, and will unfold over the next couple of months. It’ll provide a chance for people to brainstorm cool HTML5 video use cases and then to submit design mockups that combine the best use cases.

The pilot episode plus leading design sketches should be ready for public consumption in June. See the Web Made Movies roadmap for more info.

Wow! was the only word that can really sum up the Open Video Conference last weekend in New York City. It was an amazing confluence of people from the worlds of online video, art, free culture, open content and web technology. This is not a group that comes together often, but it turns out sparks fly when they do (in a good way).

First take away: people who make video are great potential allies. This may seem obvious, but it’s worth talking about. Whether I was talking to Brett Gaylor about user annotations for RIP: A Remix Manifesto or listening to Lauren Cornell talking about online video art, it’s clear that people who make video ‘get’ the potential of <video> becoming a first class citizen of the web. These are the people that really can show what’s possible with open video at the creative level. And they want to do it. The thing is, they’ll need help. There is a real need to reach out and work with video creators on this front.

Second take away: we have a long way to go. The conference provided an opportunity to dig into the practical questions of making open video work — which was a great reminder that there is a ton of work ahead. Despite best efforts, the amazing video feeds from the conference ended up in Flash and not <video> plus Theora (archived versions coming in open video soon). The lively codec panel clarified a number of things, but still left us with more questions than answers (Blizzard to blog on this separately). And, over and over, individual filmmakers expressed a) excitement about open video technology (they love the interactivity it can bring) and b) confusion about where to find good and easy to use tools to start playing with this stuff (there really aren’t any yet). All of these things are solvable, especially if we work with people who make video everyday. But we’re clearly still in very early days with open video.

Third take away: there are some simple things we can do now to build momentum. Everyone was in constant brainstorm mode in NYC. One good and simple idea: develop a campaign or visual element that says ‘this is open video’. Blizzard, Nicholas and I are going thinking this through, and will post again soon. There were also a number of ideas around helping creators use open video, partly through better documentation (Blizzard has some ideas on this) and partly by encouraging people to experiment (PCF and Mozilla announced an open video contest with this in mind). These are tiny first steps, but they are a practical start and a good way to keep the energy from the conference flowing.

Next steps: start doing the small and easy things (open video awareness and documentation), and figure out a way to pick up some of the hard stuff along the way (better codecs, easy tools, deeper connections to the people who make video). The good news is there are alot of people and orgs that want to make it happen, and they are gathering around this idea of an Open Video Alliance (the umbrella for the conference). Good things ahead.